The Obsidian Tower

by Melissa Caruso

  My stomach knotted so tight it felt like a knife was twisting in it. I kept my hand steady through sheer will.

  My fingers slipped through the shimmering ring of the jess, and all at once everything subtly changed. It was like stepping indoors: the sounds muted, the air stuffier, the world smaller and more comforting. Slightly colder, too, as if I’d taken off a light jacket.

  It wasn’t a bad sensation, but I wasn’t certain it was good, either.

  The jess settled, shining, over my wrist. Aurelio snatched his fingers back and rubbed them, eyes wide.

  “Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

  “I’m fine,” he said, watching me with an all too familiar wariness. “I just—cold was pouring off you like you were made of ice. It hurt. And I couldn’t breathe, for a second.”

  I grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right. I was just startled.” His grin returned, though it didn’t quite light up his eyes the way it had before. “Should we try an experiment, to see if it’s working?”

  “I’m not going to poke you and see if you die, if that’s what you mean.” I tried to keep my voice light, almost teasing, as if I weren’t shaking at how close I’d come to touching him.

  Foxglove cleared his throat. “I’m certain we can come up with a less extreme solution. Come, let’s go to the garden.”

  I crouched at the edge of a pebbled path in one of the inner kitchen gardens, the sunlight warming my back as it peeked over the mismatched roofs surrounding the little courtyard. A line of scraggly green weeds and a scrabble of grass poked up at the edge of the path, before the beds of neatly divided herbs began, a sign that the minor Greenwitch in charge of the castle gardens didn’t care how this one looked so long as the cooks had everything they needed. I fixed my gaze on one weed, a scrawny thing with a half-withered shell-pink ball of a flower nodding from a thin stem.

  It didn’t deserve to die. It was doing its best.

  Try it with the gloves, now. These ones are lined with silk. I remembered my father’s face, his deep-set eyes and the lowering line of his brows giving away his concern even though he wore an encouraging smile.

  I’d touched one gloved finger to the dandelion’s sunny face, holding my breath with hope and fear, and counted silently. One… Still alive. Hope had begun rising in my chest, bright and sudden, with too many edges. Two, three…

  But the dandelion had withered and died, like all the others. My parents had been excited because it had taken a few seconds, but I’d burst into tears, grieving for the bright spot of cheery yellow I’d destroyed with my touch.

  “Well?” Aurelio urged, shifting nervously from foot to foot behind me.

  I reached out toward the ragged little weed. The golden jess dangled from my bare wrist—a claim I’d let the Empire put on me, no matter how much they might try to assure me otherwise.

  My fingers lit on the tough woody stem, the small round leaves. So delicate. A knot wound tighter in the back of my throat.

  One, two, three. No tingling prickled my fingertips and ran up my arm. The leaves stayed green and soft. Four, five, six… Nothing was happening. The weed bent slightly beneath my trembling hand, but it lived obliviously on. Seven, eight, nine, ten.

  Blood of the Eldest. It worked.

  It’s not dying,” I whispered. My eyes stung fiercely; I took my hand from the plant to rub at them.

  “It seems completely fine,” Aurelio agreed, crouching down beside me with a broad, triumphant smile. “Your power is sealed.”

  “I can’t believe it.” I shook my head. “For my whole life…” I couldn’t finish. Too many words piled up and tangled together on my tongue, unspoken.

  Aurelio caught my eyes and slowly, deliberately held out his hand. I stared at him, fear squeezing my chest.

  “My father’s from Callamorne,” he said. “To say hello, or to seal a deal, or to form a partnership, they clasp hands.”

  “I can’t.” I leaned instinctively away from him. “It’s too dangerous. What if the jess isn’t strong enough? I could kill you.”

  “I’ll be ready to pull my hand back quick as lightning if I feel the faintest lick of magic,” he promised. “You have to try this on a human sometime, right?”

  He kept his hand out, steady as a rock, waiting for mine. Biting my lip with dread, I reached toward him.

  It went against every drilled-in instinct I possessed. I’d spent my entire life avoiding human touch as if people were made of fire. My mage-marked family could brace themselves in advance against the unraveling pull of my magic; my grandmother, as an immortal Witch Lord with all the power of a domain behind her, could safely ignore it. Anyone else I had to treat as fragile and precious, their lives too delicate for my rough, clumsy hands.

  The jess had worked for the weed. There was no reason it shouldn’t work for Aurelio.

  I tapped his hand, a quick flicking eyeblink of contact, to be safe.

  Nothing. No surge of power, no cry of alarm from Aurelio. Just the brief lingering warmth of his skin on my fingertip.

  His hand didn’t move, though his shoulders relaxed a bit. “No icy cold, this time. No pain. I think it’s safe.”

  I reached out again, this time clasping his hand.

  So warm. Like soft leather, but fluid, restless, alive. His pulse beat against my palm, subtle but present.

  Such a strange magic. It was all I could do not to trace the veins showing through his skin, to lift his hand to my cheek. Instead I let him shake my hand once, firmly, as my face burned. I had to force myself to let go.

  “Whew!” Aurelio laughed, shaking his auburn hair back from his eyes with a toss of his head. “Still alive.”

  “Yes.” I swallowed, but it didn’t clear the hard lump in my throat. “I guess now I don’t have to worry anymore about accidentally starting a war.”

  “Oh, we can be more ambitious than that.” Aurelio grinned. “Now that your power is under control, maybe someday you can end one.”

  I wanted to touch everything.

  The rough, flaky bark of an apple tree. The slick ribbon of a blade of grass growing between the pebbles of the path. The tickling legs of a beetle I coaxed onto my hand. Each time I had to overcome an instinctive fear that set my pulse to pounding painfully hard and fast; but everything remained quick with life beneath my touch, vibrant, healthy, alive.

  I could still feel the life around me through my link to the land—that wasn’t dependent on my own magic, so the jess didn’t take it from me—but now I could feel it with my fingertips, too. There were so many new sensations, as if I’d woken up from a dream into a different world.

  I should go. Aurelio had already left, smiling and wishing me well, to get ready for the reception. I had a lot to do; I couldn’t afford to waste time mucking about poking things in the garden. But a joy fluttered in my chest like nothing I’d felt in ages, and I didn’t want to let it go.

  I realized I was still clutching my gloves in one hand. I stared at them a moment—they were a second skin to me, broken in and worn with use. My hands felt naked without them.

  “Hey. Mage lady.” Ashe’s unmistakable voice came from behind me.

  I stuffed the gloves in my vestcoat pocket. The jess slid down my wrist, red gems winking. “Hello. Do you need something?”

  Ashe gave me a strange, assessing look, her pale eyes traveling over me as if thinking about where she’d stab me to take me down quickly. “I hear you’re going to be joining the Rookery,” she said, without any particular relish.

  “Sort of.” I tried a tentative smile. “I’ve got my duties as Warden of Gloamingard, but I’ll help out when you need my magic.”

  “Another mage is the last thing we need,” Ashe said bluntly. “Especially some arrogant atheling with the mage mark.”

  I blinked, taken aback. “Well, I’ll try not to get in your way.”

  She paced toward me with the smooth, menacing gait of a hunting cat. “You’d better not lord it over us. On
missions, no one is going to bow and scrape to you. You’ll be our most junior member—the one messing things up because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  I laughed ruefully. “I’ve got a lot of experience in that role, so I should take to it naturally.”

  Ashe stopped in front of me, her ice-blue eyes locked on mine. Then her mouth quirked, and a half-suppressed laugh burst through her lips. As I stared at her in confusion, the laugh spread to shake her whole slim body like a reed in the wind. Without warning, she smacked my shoulder, too fast to dodge; I yelped and jumped back, smarting, and that only made her laugh harder.

  “Oh, I think I might like you.” She wrestled the laugh back down to a chuckle, wiping her eyes. “You’ll do all right, I suppose. Had to make sure you weren’t one of those insufferable bastards who thinks an extra ring in their eyes makes them the seasons’ gift to the earth.”

  “Right,” I said uncertainly, rubbing my shoulder. No one had ever slapped me before. I couldn’t begin to untangle how I felt about it.

  “Anyway, Kessa sent me to ask you if you wanted to get ready for the reception with us.” Ashe waved a hand as if brushing away everything else she’d said. “You know, lace up each other’s corsets and do your hair, that kind of thing. We’ve decided to go with Raverran-style gowns, since there’ll be imperial dancing, and those big skirts twirl better than vestcoats.” She flashed me a toothy grin.

  I stared at her as the full implications of being able to attend the reception tumbled down on me. Parties and crowds and dancing all sounded wonderful, but also terrifying.

  “Hells. I always assumed I wouldn’t be going,” I said. “I should wear a mix of Raverran and Vaskandran styles, to make it clear I’m not favoring one side over the other. But I don’t have any Raverran clothes.” I had a couple of formal vestcoats I used for ceremonies, floor length and stiff with embroidery, but they were extremely Vaskandran. My mother had once offered to bring me back lovely silk and brocade gowns from the Serene Empire, but with nowhere to wear them, it was another thing I couldn’t afford to yearn for.

  Ashe snorted. “Nothing on the seasons’ sweet earth would make Kessa happier than helping you put something together. Half the reason our cover is a theater company is so that we can bring along all the clothes we need to blend in anywhere from palaces to back alleyways. We’ve got trunks full of stuff.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t want to intrude…”

  “Don’t say no,” Ashe warned, steel coming back into her eyes. “It would break Kessa’s heart.”

  “Well, we can’t have that. Of course I’ll come.”

  I smiled tentatively, but I couldn’t help wondering what in the Nine Hells I’d gotten myself into.

  “Oh, this is going to be fun,” Kessa said, her eyes bright. “And welcome to the Rookery, by the way! We’ve never had an atheling before.”

  Behind her, Ashe rummaged through a trunk in a businesslike fashion, tossing brocade bodices and great billowing puffs of silk skirts over her shoulder onto her bed in the Rookery guest quarters.

  “Watch out, or she’ll hug you,” she grunted, without looking up.

  A hug from Kessa sounded both wonderful and terrifying, like my cousin’s description of riding a bear. I took an instinctive step back.

  “Oh, hush.” Kessa elbowed Ashe without looking. “Now, I’m sure you must have questions about us. The Rookery does have a terribly mysterious reputation, after all.” She waggled her dark, graceful eyebrows.

  I’d had dozens, but of course they all fled my mind the moment she asked. “Ah…” I stared into Kessa’s sparkling dark eyes. “You said you’re a vivomancer. If the Rookery cleans up magical messes, are you all mages?”

  None of them had the mark, but less than one in a hundred mages possessed sufficient power for that. Most villages of a decent size in Vaskandar had their own minor Greenwitch or Furwitch, but there were only a handful of mage-marked outside my own family in all of Morgrain.

  Ashe let out a bark of a laugh. “Not all.”

  “Foxglove is our artificer.” Kessa held up a scarlet bodice in my general direction and narrowed her eyes critically. She gave a minute shake of her head and laid it back on the bed. “Bastian is an alchemist. We each have other roles, too. Foxglove is the leader, I’m a diplomat, Bastian is our scholar of magical sciences, and Ashe… Ashe is a woman of certain talents.”

  “I kill things,” Ashe clarified.

  Kessa shook her head. “You do more than that, Ashe.”

  “I also wound them,” she amended.

  Kessa picked up a sapphire-blue bodice and held it up to me, making a pleased noise. “Oh, this will bring out your mage mark nicely. Can’t hurt to remind those Alevarans of your rank, yes?” I nodded, with a burst of warm relief; she understood. “I’m thinking a Raverran gown with an open Vaskandran vestcoat over. Do you have one that will match this?”

  “I think so.” Half my vestcoats had blue embroidery.

  “Oh, good. Anyway, don’t let Ashe fool you into underestimating her. She was a Fury before she joined us.”

  I whistled. I’d heard of the Furies; they were an elite order dedicated to hunting down the most dangerous rogue chimeras, able to single-handedly take out creatures that could lay waste to dozens of trained soldiers. “Impressive. I thought they only took mages.”

  Kessa grimaced as if I’d said something awkward. But Ashe only grinned. “I’m no mage.”

  “How…” I glanced at Kessa, who shook her head minutely, but I couldn’t overcome my curiosity. “How did you become a Fury, then?”

  Ashe’s smile went dagger-sharp. “When I was small, I saw how mages lorded it over everyone else, and I didn’t like it. So I started picking fights with mages, for fun.” I stared at her, frozen in the act of picking up a matching petticoat. “I got pretty good at it. One day, I beat up one of the Furies’ new trainees.”

  “How are you still alive?” I asked, amazed.

  “The trainer decided this was a good way to teach recruits humility.” Ashe scooped up the scarlet bodice Kessa had rejected, giving it a satisfied nod. “The Furies took me on to beat all their spoiled mage brat recruits at a certain point in their training—me, a tiny girl with no magic—so they’d learn not to underestimate their foes. They never meant to make me a full Fury, but I did all the training and passed all the tests, and they had no choice.”

  I could appreciate shoving your competence down the throats of people who thought you couldn’t do your job without functioning magic. The grin I returned Ashe was as sharp as her own.

  “There.” Kessa set an overflowing armload of skirts, petticoats, stays, and stockings down on a chair beside me with an encouraging nod. “That should do it for your Raverran layers. Let me know if you need any help figuring it all out; I swear, Raverrans seem to feel that getting dressed should be like tying up a prisoner.”

  Ashe had found skirts to match the scarlet bodice and began stripping without ceremony, her wiry limbs pale in the warm afternoon sunlight. I struggled not to blush, but Kessa seemed cheerfully oblivious.

  I’d never changed in company before. Raverrans helped each other get dressed all the time, with their complex clothes and form-fitting lacing, though I gathered there were calculations of family and gender and friendship involved in knowing where to draw the lines of propriety. In Morgrain, we could get into our clothes just fine by ourselves, and it was too cold for much of the year to want to draw the process out; dressing was not a social event.

  Besides, who would be mad enough to disrobe in the same room as the cursed atheling with the deadly touch? But the two of them seemed to accept my presence here as if it were perfectly normal, an everyday thing—as if I were just another regular person who got ready for parties with friends all the time.

  As if we were friends.

  Hells. I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Being able to get close to people opened up a whole world of subtleties and rules I’d never learned, but everyone else kn
ew: when to touch, how close to get, what to say to someone who might actually not despise your company.

  I grabbed a stocking with as much determination as if I were going into battle. “I think I can manage. My mother is Raverran, after all. I’ve seen all this before.”

  “Good for you if you can make sense of this madness,” Ashe grunted. She slipped a long, wicked-looking dagger into her boot, then dropped her bloodred skirts back over it. I noticed they only fell to ankle length, rather than sweeping the floor like Kessa’s did. “At least it’s not Loreice, where they wear pox-cursed panniers. Can’t strap a sword on over those, and I’m sure as death not leaving Answer behind.”

  “Answer?” I asked, curious.

  Ashe grinned and scooped up her sheathed sword from the bed. “I got tired of everyone telling me I had one answer for everything.”

  I hadn’t gotten a good look at her sword before, and now stared at it in amazement. It was a slim swept-hilt rapier, but artifice wire wove through the guard in gorgeous, intricate patterns, shaping some enchantment with its language of twists and swirls. A polished sphere of obsidian formed the pommel, wrapped around with more artifice wire accented by glinting crystals. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Kessa shook her head. “You can take the girl out of the Furies, but you can’t take the Fury out of the girl, I guess.”

  She reached out to ruffle Ashe’s spiky white-blond hair. And Grace of Love, Ashe’s cheeks went pink. She was blushing.

  An odd twinge of jealousy pinched my middle. Which was ridiculous, because Kessa wasn’t mine, and didn’t seem to notice Ashe’s reaction anyway. I turned my attention to my pile of clothes with a certain muddled heat in my own face, as well.

  I managed to get dressed mostly on my own. My only struggle was with the corset lacing; my mother had always made it look so easy.

  “Here, let me help,” Kessa said gently, approaching close, too close, reaching toward me. My grandmother’s voice echoed in my memory: I’m sorry, Ryx. You can’t ever be that close to someone. There’s too much at risk.